Strategisten reaalioptioiden mallintaminen Monte Carlo -simulointimenetelmällä, case Voest Alpine Stahl Ag

Tutkielman päätavoitteena oli selvittää, miten Monte Carlo –simulointi soveltuu strategisten reaalioptioiden arvonmääritykseen. Tutkielman teoriaosuudessa käytiin läpi reaalioptioteoriaa ja Monte Carlo –simulointimenetelmää toiminta-analyyttisella tutkimusotteella. Tuloksena todettiin, että simulointimenetelmää on reaalioptioiden yhteydessä yleensä käytetty, kun muu menetelmä ei ole ollut mahdollinen. Tutkielman pääpaino on tapaustutkimukseen pohjautuvassa empiriaosuudessa, jossa rakennettiin päätöksentekometodologista tutkimusotetta seuraten simulointimalli, jolla tutkittiin Voest Alpine Stahl Ag:n vaihtoehtoisten hinnoittelustrategioiden taloudellista vaikutusta. Mallin rakentaminen perustui yrityksen tilinpäätösaineistoon. Havaittiin, ettei yritys ole valitsemansa strategian vuoksi juurikaan menettänyt tuottoja, mutta toisaalta pelkkä tilinpäätösaineisto ei riitä kovin luotettavaan tarkasteluun. Vuosikertomusten antaman tiedon pohjalta analysoitiin lisäksi yrityksen toiminnassa havaittuja reaalioptioita. Monte Carlo –simulointimenetelmä sopii reaalioptioiden arvonmääritykseen, mutta kriittisiä tekijöitä ovat mallin rakentaminen ja lähtötietojen oikeellisuus. Numeerisen mallin rinnalla on siksi aiheellista suorittaa myös laadullista reaalioptioanalyysia.

Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in angiosperm communities in the Baltic Sea

The biological variation in nature is called biodiversity. Anthropogenic pressures have led to a loss of biodiversity, alarming scientists as to what consequences declining diversity has for ecosystem functioning. The general consensus is that diversity (e.g. species richness or identity) affects functioning and provides services from which humans benefit. The aim of this thesis was to investigate how aquatic plant species richness and identity affect ecosystem functioning in terms of processes such as primary production, nutrient availability, epifaunal colonization and properties e.g. stability of Zostera marina subjected to shading. The main work was carried out in the field and ranged temporally from weeklong to 3.5 months-long experiments. The experimental plants used frequently co-occur in submerged meadows in the northern Baltic Sea and consist of eelgrass (Z. marina), perfoliate pondweed (Potamogeton perfoliatus), sago pondweed (P. pectinatus), slender-leaved pondweed (P. filiformis) and horned pondweed (Zannichellia palustris). The results showed that plant richness affected epifaunal community variables weakly, but had a strong positive effect on infaunal species number and functional diversity, while plant identity had strong effects on amphipods (Gammarus spp.), of which abundances were higher in plant assemblages consisting of P. perfoliatus. Depending on the starting standardizing unit, plant richness showed varying effects on primary production. In shoot density-standardized plots, plant richness increased the shoot densities of three out of four species and enhanced the plant biomass production. Both positive complementarity and selection effects were found to underpin the positive biodiversity effects. In shoot biomass-standardized plots, richness effects only affected biomass production of one species. Negative selection was prevalent, counteracting positive complementarity, which resulted in no significant biodiversity effect. The stability of Z. marina was affected by plant richness in such that Z. marina growing in polycultures lost proportionally less biomass than Z. marina in monocultures and thus had a higher resistance to shading. Monoculture plants in turn gained biomass faster, and thereby had a faster recovery than Z. marina growing in polycultures. These results indicate that positive interspecific interactions occurred during shading, while the faster recovery of monocultures suggests that the change from shading stress to recovery resulted in a shift from positive interactions to resource competition between species. The results derived from this thesis show that plant diversity affects ecosystem functioning and contribute to the growing knowledge of plant diversity being an important component of aquatic ecosystems. Diverse plant communities sustain higher primary productivity than comparable monocultures, affect faunal communities positively and enhance stability. Richness and identity effects vary, and identity has generally stronger effects on more variables than richness. However, species-rich communities are likely to contain several species with differing effects on functions, which renders species richness important for functioning. Mixed meadows add to coastal ecosystem functioning in the northern Baltic Sea and may provide with services essential for human well-being.

Disturbance and ecosystem functioning : the role of changes in benthic biological traits

Rapid changes in biodiversity are occurring globally, as a consequence of anthropogenic disturbance. This has raised concerns, since biodiversity is known to significantly contribute to ecosystem functions and services. Marine benthic communities participate in numerous functions provided by soft-sedimentary ecosystems. Eutrophication-induced oxygen deficiency is a growing threat against infaunal communities, both in open sea areas and in coastal zones. There is thus a need to understand how such disturbance affects benthic communities, and what is lost in terms of ecosystem functioning if benthic communities are harmed. In this thesis, the status of benthic biodiversity was assessed for the open Baltic Sea, a system severely affected by broad-scale hypoxia. Long-term monitoring data made it possible to establish quantitative biodiversity baselines against which change could be compared. The findings show that benthic biodiversity is currently severely impaired in large areas of the open Baltic Sea, from the Bornholm Basin to the Gulf of Finland. The observed reduction in biodiversity indicates that benthic communities are structurally and functionally impoverished in several of the sub-basins due to the hypoxic stress. A more detailed examination of disturbance impacts (through field studies and -experiments) on benthic communities in coastal areas showed that changes in benthic community structure and function took place well before species were lost from the system. The degradation of benthic community structure and function was directed by the type of disturbance, and its specific temporal and spatial characteristics. The observed shifts in benthic trait composition were primarily the result of reductions in species’ abundances, or of changes in demographic characteristics, such as the loss of large, adult bivalves. Reduction in community functions was expressed as declines in the benthic bioturbation potential and in secondary biomass production. The benthic communities and their degradation accounted for a substantial proportion of the changes observed in ecosystem multifunctionality. Individual ecosystem functions (i.e. measures of sediment ecosystem metabolism, elemental cycling, biomass production, organic matter transformation and physical structuring) were observed to differ in their response to increasing hypoxic disturbance. Interestingly, the results suggested that an impairment of ecosystem functioning could be detected at an earlier stage if multiple functions were considered. Importantly, the findings indicate that even small-scale hypoxic disturbance can reduce the buffering capacity of sedimentary ecosystem, and increase the susceptibility of the system towards further stress. Although the results of the individual papers are context-dependent, their combined outcome implies that healthy benthic communities are important for sustaining overall ecosystem functioning as well as ecosystem resilience in the Baltic Sea.

Exploring the value creation in service ecosystem context: the case of the information technology sector

This thesis examines customer value creation in a service ecosystem context. The objective of this thesis is to develop a comprehensive view of value creation processes in a service ecosystem context and an understanding on the roles of the stakeholders involved in these processes, focusing on the information technology industry. The novelty of the two central concepts of this thesis, systemic customer value and service ecosystem, as well as the gap in the literature of empirical research on value creation in an ecosystem-level, opened an interesting research topic. The empirical study is conducted as a single case analysis, utilizing Group Decision Support System (GDSS) and also Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The findings suggest that customer value is created by a complex combination of interactions among different actors of the ecosystem. Thus, value is not created by a single offering directed to the customer, but by an integration of services from different parts of the ecosystem as well as the active participation of customer in this process.

Ecosystem architecture design: endogenous and exogenous structural properties

The aim of this dissertation is to bridge and synthesize the different streams of literature addressing ecosystem architecture through a multiple‐lens perspective. In addition, the structural properties of and processes to design and manage the architecture will be examined. With this approach, the oft‐neglected actor‐structure duality is addressed and both the position and structure, and action and process are under scrutiny. Further, the developed framework and empirical evidence offer valuable insights on how firms collectively create value and individually appropriate value. The dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part comprises a literature review, as well as the conclusions of the whole study, and the second part includes six research publications. The dissertation is based on three different reasoning logics: abduction, induction and deduction; related qualitative and quantitative methodologies are utilized in the empirical examination of the phenomenon in the information and communication technology industry. The results suggest firstly that there are endogenous and exogenous structural properties of the ecosystem architecture. Out of these, the former ones can be more easily influenced by a particular actor whereas the latter ones are taken more or less for granted. Secondly, the exogenous ecosystem design properties influence the value creation potential of the ecosystem whereas the endogenous ecosystem design properties influence the value appropriation potential of a particular actor in the ecosystem. Thirdly, the study suggests that there is a relationship between endogenous and exogenous structural properties in that the endogenous properties can be leveraged to create and reconfigure the exogenous properties whereas the exogenous properties prose opportunities and restrictions on the use of endogenous properties. In addition, the study suggests that there are different emergent and engineered processes to design and manage ecosystem architecture and to influence both the endogenous and exogenous structural properties of ecosystem architecture. This study makes three main contributions. First, on the conceptual level, it brings coherence and direction to the fast growing body of literature on novel inter‐organizational arrangements, such as ecosystems. It does this by bridging and synthetizing three different streams of literature, namely the boundary, design and orchestration conception. Secondly, it sets out a framework that enhances our understanding of the structural properties of ecosystem architecture; of the processes to design and manage ecosystem architecture; and of their influence on the value creation potential of the ecosystem and the value capture potential of a particular firm. Thirdly, it offers empirical evidence of the structural properties and processes.

Interpreting marine benthic ecosystem functioning in coastal waters: validating the biological trait concept

Coastal areas harbour high biodiversity, but are simultaneously affected by rapid degradations of species and habitats due to human interactions. Such alterations also affect the functioning of the ecosystem, which is primarily governed by the characteristics or traits expressed by the organisms present. Marine benthic fauna is nvolved in numerous functions such as organic matter transformation and transport, secondary production, oxygen transport as well as nutrient cycling. Approaches utilising the variety of faunal traits to assess benthic community functioning have rapidly increased and shown the need for further development of the concept. In this thesis, I applied biological trait analysis that allows for assessments of a multitude of categorical traits and thus evaluation of multiple functional aspects simultaneously. I determined the functional trait structure, diversity and variability of coastal zoobenthic communities in the Baltic Sea. The measures were related to recruitment processes, habitat heterogeneity, large-scale environmental and taxonomic gradients as well as anthropogenic impacts. The studies comprised spatial scales from metres to thousands of kilometres, and temporal scales spanning one season as well as a decade. The benthic functional structure was found to vary within and between seagrass landscape microhabitats and four different habitats within a coastal bay, in papers I and II respectively. Expressions of trait categories varied within habitats, while the density of individuals was found to drive the functional differences between habitats. The findings in paper III unveiled high trait richness of Finnish coastal benthos (25 traits and 102 cateogries) although this differed between areas high and low in salinity and human pressure. In paper IV, the natural reduction in taxonomic richness across the Baltic Sea led to an overall reduction in function. However, functional richness in terms of number of trait categories remained comparatively high at low taxon richness. Changes in number of taxa within trait categories were also subtle and some individual categories were maintained or even increased. The temporal analysis in papers I and III highlighted generalities in trait expressions and dominant trait categories in a seagrass landscape as well as a “type organism” for the northern Baltic Sea. Some initial findings were made in all four papers on the role of common and rare species and traits for benthic community functioning. The findings show that common and rare species may not always express the same trait categories in relation to each other. Rare species in general did not express unique functional properties. In order to advance the understanding of the approach, I also assessed some issues concerning the limitations of the concept. This was conducted by evaluating the link between trait category and taxonomic richness using especially univariate measures. My results also show the need to collaborate nationally and internationally on safeguarding the utility of taxonomic and trait data. The findings also highlight the importance of including functional trait information into current efforts in marine spatial planning and biomonitoring.

Institutional Repository ecosystem in Japan, IRDB and JAIRO Cloud

Poster at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Interoperability specifications and an automatic validation tool as a key factor for the support of a repository ecosystem

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Integrating Student Learning into the Repository Ecosystem

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

Evolver: The Evolution of The Extended EPrints Ecosystem

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014